While she occupied herself with a favourite piece of embroidery, and was matching the silks, holding them up to the light, he had risen, and was leaning against the side of the bay window; a frequent attitude with him; for what are called "occasional" chairs are often rather frail and small for accommodating a large tall man, and drawing-room sofas are sometimes exceedingly low. In any one's eyes he would have passed for a fine man, something more (to those who could see it) than a merely handsome man, for the curves of his mouth had mastery in them, and his eyes were full of grave sweetness. Emily was always delighted with the somewhat unusual meeting in him of personal majesty, with the good-humoured easy bonhomie which had caused his late discomfiture. She half turned, and looked up.
"How charming she is!" he thought, as he looked down; "there will be grace and beauty into the bargain!" and he proceeded, in pursuit of what he considered sincere and gentlemanlike, to venture on the dangerous ground again, not being aware how it quaked under him.
The casual mention of some acquaintance who had lately married gave him the chance that he thought he wanted. He would be happy enough—people might in general be happy enough, he hinted, glancing from the particular instance to lay down a general proposition—"if they did not expect too much—if they were less romantic; for himself, he had not the presumption to expect more than a sincere liking—a cordial approval—such as he himself could entertain. It was the only feeling he had ever inspired, or——"
No, he did not say felt.
But he presently alluded to his late wife, and then reverting to his former speech, said, "And yet I was happy with her! I consider that I was fortunate."
"Moderate," thought Emily; "but as much as it is possible for him to say."
"And," he continued, "she has laid me under obligations that make it impossible for me ever to forget her. I feel the blessing of having our children about me. And—and also—what I owe to her on their account—I never spend a day without thinking of her."
"Poor Janie!" thought Emily, very much touched, "she did not deserve this tribute. How coldly I have often heard her talk of him!"
And then, not without a certain grave sweetness of manner that made her heart ache, alike with tender shame to think how little her dead husband had ever been accounted of, compared with this now possible future one, and with such jealousy as one may feel of a dead wife who would have cared as little for long remembrance as she had done for living affection, Emily listened, while he managed quite naturally, and by the slightest hints, to bring her also in—her past lot and opinions. She felt, rather than heard, the intention; "and he could not presume to say," he went on, "he was not sure whether a man might hope for a second marriage, which could have all the advantages of a first. Yet he thought that in any suitable marriage there might be enough benefit on both sides to make it almost equally."
"Equally what?" Emily wondered.